I’ll explain the real issues of the government crisis
Is the current government structure adequate in the face of the dramatic situation in the country? This is the key question to ask to understand the government crisis that is shaking the Conte executive. Gianfranco Polillo's analysis
Politics questions the outcome of a crisis that seems indecipherable to most. Daughter of an overstitching or an excess of protagonism, as many mistakenly believe, mindful of the events that led to the end of the Renzi government. Yet the most logical explanation – just look at it – is there at hand. At issue is the adequacy or otherwise of the government structure in the face of the dramatic situation in the country. Evaluation that, unfortunately, does not lend itself to definitive judgments: because the worst or the best is to be seen. And when you see it there will be nothing more to do.
This is a more than widespread feeling. Just look around. Without necessarily having to keep in mind the distinction made by Mario Draghi between "good debt" and bad debt. Concern that no member of the government, save the Italia Viva patrol, seems to have taken on board. In the minds of professionals and individual entrepreneurs, however, the question is the same and fuels the great problem. But who will pay in the end? Was the rain of public money in the last year just a void to lose or did it contribute to making the production bases of the country less unstable?
More than legitimate questions if we consider that, in one year, the Government has committed a sum that is almost equal to the total amount of the Recovery Fund. Although this last intervention has a multi-year dimension. Especially if you don't close your eyes on its intrinsic – so to speak – qualities. Plan, moreover, several times reworked, precisely to take into account the criticisms of Italia Viva, but still far from having reached that quality that would also be necessary.
At best, the government has pedantically followed the "Guidelines", launched by the European Commission. A general scheme that does not blend well with the specificity of the Italian reality. And consequently it fails to attack its actual weaknesses, nor to leverage its strengths. To help determine that greater development, which is the only key that can make it possible to repay, without excessive trauma, that debt which, in the meantime, has increased dramatically.
In the worst-case scenario, however, the articulation of the Plan reflects, with far too much precision, the balance of power between government allies. And within the government structure the weight of individual ministers and various potentates. This double vulnus makes the pendulum swing decisively, if not towards pessimism, at least in the direction of complete disenchantment. It will therefore be difficult to bet once again on the Italian star. While in Europe we are already beginning to discuss the need for a return, within a reasonable period of time, to a situation of financial normality.
If this is the picture, can we continue to call into question the subjectivism of the individual protagonists, to explain the evolution underway? Point out defects and virtues, presumed or real, of each one; instead of looking at the relationship that should exist between governance and the real crisis of the country? A question, the latter, which can help to illuminate the possible time to come. Avoiding the excessive simplification according to which the path would already be drawn between a surrender by Renzi, a Count or early elections.
Of course, each of these hypotheses is in place. But they will arrive – if the crisis opens – at the end of a path, which presents its own variables, which are not obvious. Because from that moment on, a character will enter the scene – the President of the Republic – until now forced to remain in the somewhat sacrificed sphere of moral suasion alone. While from that moment on he will become the architect of the crisis. Indeed, it will be up to Sergio Mattarella to confer the task, after having consulted all the political forces. It may be granted to Giuseppe Conte himself, but also to some other character: even unrelated to the current political equilibrium. We will see.
But right now it can be said that the oldest characters, especially those who have launched anathemas, will no longer have the weight of yesterday. They will once again be just one of the pieces that make up the puzzle of the crisis. But what matters most is that, finally, a debate and confrontation will open up that cannot be reduced to the Cencelli manual. And that perhaps it will correct those errors, which make the Recovery Plan a more than indigestible document.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/vi-spiego-i-veri-nodi-della-crisi-di-governo/ on Wed, 13 Jan 2021 08:22:23 +0000.